Michael Johnson shatters world record in 200M at 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta to win an historic double

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS|

Aug 01, 2016 | 8:01 AM

Michael Johnson of the United States celebrates after he won the men's 200 meter final in a world record time of 19.32 at the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta. (DOUG MILLS/AP)

(Originally published by the Daily News on Friday, Aug. 2, 1996; written by Wayne Coffey)

ATLANTA - Michael Johnson, a man who leaves nothing to chance, began mapping out his route to this moment four years ago, when he left Barcelona with tears in his eyes and bad food in his stomach.

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He calculated every split of every workout. He constructed his whole athletic life around his mission.

And last night came the residue of his grand design, 200 meters to Olympic history, and the sweetest sort of redemption, in a fashion neither he nor anyone else in the world could have ever imagined.

Johnson did not merely become the first man to win 200 and 400-meter gold medals. He didn't merely break his own world record. He utterly shattered it, his gold shoes blazing over red track, in an Olympic performance for the ages, one that may even surpass Bob Beamon's epic long jump of 1968 for its sheer transcendence.

For last night Michael Johnson ran faster than any man ever has. The crowd of nearly 83,000 erupted the instant Johnson crossed the finish, and made that noise sound like a whisper a heartbeat later, when the number 19.32 went up on the scoreboard. The previous record 19.66 was set by Johnson here five weeks earlier.

Johnson knelt on the red surface, the roar continuing, even his fellow competitors looking on in disbelief. The roar would not stop. Johnson pointed to the scoreboard and held up his index finger. Nobody has ever been so entitled to self-congratulation.

"I knew I was going faster than 19.66, but I had no idea how fast," Johnson said. He ran the first 100 meters in 10.12, the second in 9.20.

"It's beyond comprehension," said his coach, Clyde Hart.

Johnson went so fast that Frankie Fredericks, the silver medalist, ran the third-fastest time in history (19.68), a personal-best by .14, and got smoked. So fast that Ato Boldon, who won his second sprint bronze of the Games, bowed down in homage to Johnson, right on the track.

New York Daily News published this on Aug. 2, 1996. (New York Daily News)

Boldon ran 19.80, and was barely in the same county.

"I never heard such an explosion of noise," Johnson said. "I never heard people shouting so loud. This crowd has been great all week. They deserved the world record and I was happy to give it to them."

Johnson said he actually stumbled out of the blocks a bit, but quickly recovered, and ran the curve brilliantly, his muscular arms pumping, his body, as ever, ramrod straight.

"Coming home, I felt really good," Johnson said.

Johnson's double unprecedented for a male in track was the second in about a 10-minute span last night. Just before the men's 200, the women's 200 went off, and Marie-Jose Perec of France by way of Guadaloupe ran down Merlene Ottey of Jamaica in the final 10 meters to take the women's 200, in 22.12.

Perec won the women's 400 the same night Johnson won his. For the 36-year-old Ottey, the grande dame of Olympic heartache, it was one more excruciating "almost."

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Ottey made history in the race by becoming the first runner to reach the final of the same event in five Olympics. She had three bronzes before, and has now added a silver.

Ottey lost the 100 to Gail Devers by .005 seconds. This time she led about 95% of the race, and lost by .12 seconds.

"I hoped I would have enough to (win), but I didn't," Ottey said.

It is difficult to conceive the amount of pressure Johnson was under as these Games began. He had lobbied the international track and field federation to change the Olympic schedule to accommodate his attempted double. For half a year, he said, every time people called, every time he picked up a paper or a magazine, the talk was inevitably about his double.

He brought it upon himself, and he delivered in the most glorious of ways.

"I can't even describe the pressure," Johnson said.

A day earlier, Johnson had said he needed to be mean, aggressive, in running the 200. And he was all of that, almost attacking the track as he ran.

"If someone had said that Michael Johnson was going to run 19.32 in this race, I wouldn't have shown up," Boldon said.

Four years later, after food poisoning ruined his 200 chances in Barcelona, four years of having his dream deferred, Michael Johnson had fulfilled his ambitious agenda. He had his double, and very few people who were here could believe what they had witnessed.

Somebody asked Johnson what his plans were for the immediate future. He said he wasn't sure, and smiled.